Designing and implementing systems that promote peace, security, prosperity, freedom and abundance for every self aware entity.

Hard to pick.
Been doing a bit of philosophic study, and my usual scanning of scientific breakthroughs.
Probably the most interesting development I've learned of this week is the development of a RNA nano motor, that hold the potential to develop very fast and very cheap methods of sequencing our DNA, and to manipulate DNA at the cellular level - something required for whole body rejuvenation technology.

There are any number of retreat centers,and ways to retreat.

Fundamentally I am not interested in retreat.  I am interested in forging ahead, in developing skills, building relationships and creating teams that actively work to create systems that work for all life.

So - not interest in retreat. 

Full ahead !!!

The lounge - seated in my zero gravity recliner chair, laptop on my lap, view of mountains and ocean out the ranch-slider windows, woodfire to my right, 20 ft from the kitchen, Ailsa's piano at my left elbow.

How recently?
Haven't met a lot of new people recently - as in the last few days.

Met some very intriguing people at my nephew's wedding earlier this year, some advanced materials research scientists from China.   Brilliant in their fields, and apparently quite happy to be completely specialised and compartmentalised, without any apparent curiosity as to the greater context of their work.  Very interesting to talk to.  Very nice people.  Quite fascinating.   A totally alien mode of thought compared to my way of thinking.

Was really good to catch up with my old friend Caspar that same weekend - he has to be one of the brightest people about.  Another fascinating mind - designed some of the most sohisticated software on the planet, and plays a reasonable game of chess.

There are an infinite number of possible ways of seeing or doing anything!

I would like to see as much money going into developing systems to provide abundance for all as goes into defence systems.

What sort of compassion?

The feminine caring compassion or the masculine compassion that enables the hard decisions to be made and actions to be taken.

I think I have sufficient compassion - perhaps too much.

Here in Kaikoura - where I am.


It is a small community, at a techtonic boundary, with some of the fastest growing mountains in the world.
There is a lot of diversity here - people, geology, ecology, weather  - much natural beauty, much energy.

It is the sort of place that feeds and energises me.

This morning I was imagining what is required at the molecular level to refresh our genetics.   That within each of our cells each of the chromosomes is covered with a collection of sugars and proteins that selectively allow and inhibit the expression of specific genes.   Every cell has a slightly different combination of these secondary molecules, modulating the expression of the genes in the DNA. 

In my mind's eye I was driving a nano vehicle around these massive collections of molecules, and imagining how we might map and replicate the exact structure of each of these secondary molecules surrounding the DNA.   It is these secondary molecules that inform the cell as to where it is, and what it ought to be doing within our bodies.    If we are to extend our lifespeans, one of the things we must do is to refresh the DNA within each of our cells, and each of the organelles within those cells.  To do that it is not sufficient simply to replicate new DNA and insert it, we need to ensure that all of the HOX family genes have the approriate modifier molecules to tell the cell what it is - liver, blood vessel, lung, nerve, etc - and what its neighbour ought to be.

For a single mind to envisage the detail of doing that to just a single cell, is similar to knowing every individual in a city of 60,000; knowing their names, what they do, where they live.  

We need to develop systems to do this for one cell, then develop systems to replicate it across each of the 70 trillion cells within each of our bodies, and then have systems to replicate that across each of the 6 billion people on the planet.


I think this morning I really got the absolute magnitude of the task I have set myself.
It is going to take quite a team.

Having my body in this physical space seems to feed something in the depths of the myriad of patterns in my brain that allows me to have the sorts of visual-spatial experiences that I do - to be able to imagine the things I imagine.

It's a very beautiful place.

I don't do "sacred" in the normal sense.

I guess the most sacred things to me would be anything that can hold a conversation, and seems capable of independent choice and independent creativity (abstraction / intuition).


After that, would come life in general.

After that, the environments that supports life - particularly some of the magnificent wild scenery one finds, particularly at active tectonic plate boundaries.

Very interesting question.

It seems that there is sufficient abundance in the world for everyone to have plenty to eat - so in that sense yes.

If one takes a more metaphorical interpretation, and looks at the potentially insatiable desires of a culture fed and driven by advertising and fashion; then there is a cost - on all of us and the environment.  So in this sense no.


In most of life, it seems to me that we tend to get back what we put in to life.

It is going to take a lot of work to create an environment where all can experience abundance.   www.solnx.org is my best option forward, and there may be many other options that I know little or nothing about.

Just about everyone I've dealt with at some time or other.

Not quite so often recently, and I still find myself doing it.
Every one of us can be and is both greater and lesser than normal from time to time.
We can be amazing, and a few minutes later, back at our childish worst.

Funny thing this being human.
"Nought so queer as folk!"

Focus on too many things at once.

When I interupt and switch focus too fast to make progess on any one issue - I get into a sort of stasis; and go nowhere.

What it takes to break that is a conscious choice of saying yes to one thing, and focusing on it until it is done - ignoring all interupts.

I am still far from a master at this.
I fail a lot.
I get confused by what is most important.
I space out in overwhelm - ignoring evrything because I cannot do everything.

Perhaps the most powerful thing is the realisation that we can choose anything any time - nothing needs to be fixed and forever, and it can be if we choose.

I guess I first started reading about climate change in 1973 - John Gribben (then a writer for the british weekly science magazine New Scientist) published a book called "Our Changing Earth".

About 14 years ago it got to the point that my wife and I bought 35 acres of low quality farmland and planted it in plantation forestry.   Thinking that would more than offset our carbon footprint (which it is).

I have spoken at many meetings since on the topic, and been engaged in many online fora.  I have twice travelled to our capital city to speak to parliamentary select committees on the topic.   I will discuss the topic with anyone interested almost any time.

It seems to me that most of the international response is counter productive, as is most of the public response.

It seems that most people and politicians think that passing laws can solve any problem.

It appears to me that we have got to the point that we have far more laws than are necessary - so much so that it has become completely counter productive, and far from incentivising people to exercise their judgement and creativity responsibly, we are forcing people to follow rules even when it is obvious to them that the rules are inappropriate to the situation.


John Taylor Gatto wrote a beautiful ittle book "Dumbing us down" which describes this malaise in the US Education system.
It is far wider than that.
It is everywhere - all systems, all societies.

It seems to me that there really is a problem with the amount of CO2 we are releasing into the atmosphere from buring fossil fuels - but our responses thus far are far from sensible or appropriate.

Ray Kurzweil has demonstrated that solar photovoltaics have been doubling their installed capacity every 2 years, for several decades - getting cheaper all the while.  Currently they provide 0.1% of humanity's energy needs.  1/1000th.  1000 is ten doublings.   On current trends, if we do nothing other than business as usual, we will completely replace fossil fuels with clean solar power in 20 years.

If we decided to invest some government money in the area, by fully funding students into science and technology degrees as one way, we could considerably shorten that time.

Another way of shortening it would be to prevent anyone from exercising patent rights unless they could demonstrate a substantial investment and a doubling of production at least every 2 years.

The imposition of carbon trading systems only supports the existing fossil fuel industry by creating yet another set of vested interests in retaining fossil fuels.

It seems that most of our legal system is in place to protect the money making capacity of vested interests, rather than any sort of unbiased "public good", though public good is often the excuse cited for any new legislation.

We heat our house from wood grown on our own half acre section, and try to use energy wisely.  And that is a personal choice.

Enough rant for one evening.

I hope I got someone thinking.

A few bits of computer code and a couple of ideas.  One idea was very personal, it was a 3D vision of driving a nano-submarine around and through a chromosome, and looking at the huge molecular structure with all it's modifier molecules wobbling away beside me - kind of like flying a small Cesna around a large mountain - except a lot more bumps on the mountain and most of them roundish.

The other idea was about the source of suffering.   My brain created for me the idea that suffering is about a misclassification.   We take a classification that belongs in the domain of possibility and apply it to the domain of history - and suffering is one interpretation of the result.   The classification is judgement, in the sense of what ought or ought not to be.   Such judgement is powerful when applied to the domain of the possible, the range of things that we might bring into reality.   Yet once something has become reality, it simply is, and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise - which is the source of all suffering (as distinct from pain).

It seems to me that reality simply is what it is when it is it.   We have no direct access to that.
What we have is access to sense impressions of what was a short while ago, which impressions inform a model in our brains, and we treat that model as if it is reality (which it isn't, just a close approximation in most circumstances).

Even our sense impressions are modulated by many processes, and are prone to errors.   It can make sense to question specific sense impressions, or the model that we create from them, but not the reality from which the sense impressions derive.

Thus it seems clear to me now that we can eliminate suffering if we accept all that is, and be very clear that ideas like "ought" belong only to consideration of things that yet might be, and not to anything that has already become.

A new dimension of possibility has opened.  A new level of peace and acceptance is available.

Rather than compromise, I prefer creativity.

It is usually possible to create a new context in which all parties get what they want.   Sometimes this requires thinking outside what most people consider "reasonable boundaries".

Sometimes compromise works, as part of a path to a larger objective.

Some things I do not compromise on - like the ultimate objective of creating systems that support enabling every individual with the resources to do whatever they responsibly choose (provided those choices do not involve injury to others, restriction of the freedom of others, or wilful damage to property of others).

Most other things are not really that significant, so compromise isn't a real issue.

Initially I couldn't think of anyone I'd found recently, then a few started coming to mind.

I found the runaway puppy about an hour ago, we had gone off for a run, along our usualy path, and she got distracted by another runner and ended up losing me and returning home by herself.   I eventually went home and there was the pup waiting for me.

I found my daughter this afternoon.  I was a bit late getting to school to pick her up, and on the way I spotted her walking up the footpath towards me, and pulled over and she got in the car.

On Saturday I found my teammates in the Kaikoura Pro Am golf tournament inthe carpark, they pulled in behind me.

Not very often.

Sometimes I play will all the abandon of a 3 year old.

Sometimes I am repsonsible far beyond my years.

Mostly I'm somewhere in between, but not very often at the average.

Major life changes are less frequently than six months, but changing gears can be be several times a second.

We have often said that if we made a script for a soap opera from our lives no one would believe it - just too far out.

Like today - Ailsa turned 48.  We started out opening presents, then I started the fire while she spent an hour or so at the piano, then we decided to go up to Kahutara Saddle.  Within 30 minutes we had packed gas stove, bacon, eggs, coffee, and were on the road.  An hour later we had the 4WD parked at 4,000 ft (after many gear changes, and 40 minutes in Low ratio 4WD), at a snow drift, having just gone up "Dead Horse Gully" (on a private gravel road into the high country), which had some fresh rockfalls, one about half the size of our Hilux.  Eventually it got too muddy to go on, so we parked, and started walking,  Half an hour later we were at the top of the mountain.  We cooked our food, took a couple of hundred digital photos, let thepup have a good run in the snow, then came down again.  Ailsa went to singing with a friend at two, while I uploaded the photos to the server.  Then I went to golf at 3 with 3 of my firends.  Meantime Ailsa came home and went out for  a walk with our neighbour Bev.  Then I came home from golf, we got ready and went out to have dinner with friends - now back home again.

Along the way I did a bit of coding, sorted out a problem for a client, and reviewed our finances for the last year.

Another day, both like and unlike any other.

Stop resisting what you know you need to do and just do it.

Then everything else is easy and possible.

Money would be useful right now at a personal level.

More tolerance and understanding, and a bit more long term vision would be nice at a societal level. 

And all the above can be created with a bit of effort on my part.

There are so many things that need doing that I don't get paid for, perhaps a few of those need to go on the back burner until I generated a few more financial resources.

I like the scientific definition of power, as it seems to apply to any realm one wishes, at whatever level one is willing to contemplate it - as stated in the Oxford - "any form of energy or force available for application to work".

Thus one can think of physical power, and physical actions; or one can delve ever deeper into abstractions that underly motivation and or understanding of people, and by alteration of context produce transformation of outcome.

The layers and levels seem infinite.  It is not possible for any individual to fully understand any level, let alone the infinity of levels, each of which contains it's own set(s) of infinities.

There is endless scope for creative possibility, and no possibility of certainty.

So one can play, and be of service (or not) at any level one chooses, always aware that there may be others, doing their thing, above, below or around, in an infinitely dimensional dance of consequences.

It seems more and more of us are choosing to create paths that work for every individual, and include ideas like love, peace, prosperity, freedom, and distributed rather than centralised technologies.

Ultimately it is what we choose to use our power for, rather than how we difine our power (which is actually unlimited - though few are willing to contemplate that).

Asking questions, finding answers, finding patterns.

I think it is easy for everyone, but I think our education systems, culture and institutions, beat it out of most of us, and teach us to obey the rules, follow orders, rather than sort it out for ourselves.

As young children we all seem to have an insatiable curiosity.  Somewhere along the way, after being told a few tens of thousands of times "No - that is wrong", "Do it this way", "The law say thou shalt do this", some book sys "This is how it shall be", some authority has declared "it is this way and no other".

Eventually most get out of the habit of questioning, out of the habit of trusting thesmselves, and eventually out of the habit of trusting anything - creating for themselves a resigned and cynical reality.

It doesn't need to be so.

Each of our brains is an amazing holographic processor, that gives every one who is capable of reading this an infinite power of creativity.

Nothing is fixed or static in reality.   What we call reality isn't - what we are aware of is already history by the time we are aware of it  - think about it, it takes time for sound waves, or light photons to reach you, time for your nerves to take those signals to your brain, and time for your brain to turn that into your awareness of the situation.   By the time any of us becomes aware of anything we call "real", it is already over, past and gone.

It seems that mostly we are taught very early that the pure joy of discovery, of trying something out, making a mistake, and learning a lesson; is somehow wrong - that we ought never to make mistakes.
How insane is that !!!!!!!!!

Learn to make mistakes again, learn to love them, not for the error, but for the lesson.

Trust.

Trust yourself enough to love yourself, to listen to your own intuitions.

Trust your self enough to make your own choices, in the face of the disagreement of others, or the censure of culture, or the law - provided you are confident you are acting for the greater benefit of all.

Trust others enough to love them, trust them enough to tell them your truth, trust them enough to listen to their truth.

Trust in your own infinite powers of undertanding, of creativity, of compassion, of tollerance.

Sometimes some people will break your trust, and most people, most of the time, will honour it, and the community you build from your trust will be your greatest support in situations you could never have imagined.

A spring day.
Still plenty of evidence of last winter's snows about, and there is bright sun, with the promise of more sun than snow in the coming months.

Oh yes !!!

So incredibly fortunate.

I am alive.
I have lived over half a century.
I have gone from a childhood poverty, to living in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, with the company of a beautiful woman whom I love more than I ever dreamed possible.   I have flown aircraft, driven cars faster than most people ever dream of, done so many many things that as a kid I dreamed of, but never considered I would ever do.

I have come to understand so much about our natural world, about myself, about the nature of possibility, about the possibility of being human - much more than I ever dreamed possible.  And in coming so far, I see ahead an infinite amount yet to be learned and explored.

I am certain that it is possible to extend human lifespans indefinitely, and I am not at all certain that I will manage to get that possibility for myself, and maybe I will.
Maybe I really will get to experience an indefinite life of freedom, abundance, love, prosperity and connection.  Maybe I will be able to create that possibility for every person.

I am not frightened by the possibility of dying tomorrow - I'd rather not, and if it happens it happens.

When I think of the improbability of a me coming into existence, I feel so profoundly fortunate.

Natural history.

The evolution  of matter, stars, planets, life, culture, language, awareness, possibility.

A history of how we got to be what we are, and an exploration of our infinite capacity to be creative.

I'm a bit past playing roles, I am just me.  A peculiar collection of habits, thoughts, and possibilities.

I can be just about everything one can imagine from time to time, arrogant, angry, petulant, loving, patient, impatient, ...., as can most of us, and at my best I am a stand for the greatness in everyone, for freedom, prosperity and individual creativity,and for societal level systems that support and empower all individuals in their personal exploration of their own creative potential.